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At a reunion held a few years ago by my husband's family outside Baltimore, my brother-in-law, an architect, suggested we explore Guilford, a section of Northeast Baltimore where their Italian immigrant grandfather had done stonework which he regarded as the finest of his career. An elderly relative wanted no part of the expedition. Yes, grandpa had been very proud of his stone houses, walks, walls, and porter lodges, she recalled. But Guilford prohibited any Italian from moving in. It was "restricted." No Italian, Jewish, or black families need apply. My young, well-educated Italian American in-laws—bankers, professors, lawyers—pondered the unwelcome idea that their hard-working grandfather had treasured having built houses that he himself had been forbidden to buy.
Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870–1930
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Yet for the decades between the Civil War and the Great Depression—the first heyday of suburban development in America—most upper- and upper-middle-class prime residential developments routinely discriminated in a fashion we now regard as reprehensible. A family's having the money to buy a house wasn't sufficient. It also had to be the right color and ethnicity, and attend the correct church. Deeds carried restrictive covenants that set forth a series of proscriptions that bound both buyer and seller, as well as subsequent owners. In addition to Guilford, Maryland, restrictive covenants governed such famous developments as Forest Hill Gardens and Great Neck Hills in New York, Colony Hills in Massachusetts, Park Ridge in Illinois, Country Club District in Kansas, Palos Verdes in California, and hundreds of others across the country.
Some of the restrictions, particularly in the days before zoning, made eminent sense: no slaughterhouses, for example. No oil refineries, iron foundries, coal yards, hen houses, or reform schools. Some restrictions were a matter of taste, but surely enhanced property values, such as landscaping and set-back requirements. Other restrictions doubtless contributed to the deadening of suburbia that is so much criticized today: no stores, no theaters, no restaurants. But these are really policy considerations, having to do with personal preferences. Do you want to live in a quiet, serene, fairly uniform haven, or do you want to live in a lively, dense, urbane neighborhood? People of good will can and do disagree, and make different choices.
The pernicious restrictive covenants—not struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional until 1948—had to do with race and religion. The most desirable developments were confined to white, Anglo-Saxon Protestants, preferably Episcopalian, with an understood hierarchy for everybody else—which meant that upwardly mobile Americans seeking the most desirable housing as a reward for their newfound wealth, education, and success were usually blocked if they were anything but white Protestants.
Now this little-remembered but immensely important practice has been given its own history by Robert M. Fogelson, a professor of urban studies and history at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. To drive home just how extensive the practice was, Fogelson tells the story of an incident that occurred in Los Angeles in 1948. Singer Nat King Cole, one of the most successful entertainers of the 20th century, bought a 12-room house for $85,000 in Hancock Park, a restricted area. Hancock Park's wealthy doctors, lawyers, and businessmen organized to keep Cole out. When the Supreme Court struck down restrictive covenants as unenforceable by the state, they decided to buy him out, telling him they did not want any undesirables moving in. "Neither do I," said Cole. "And if I see anybody undesirable coming in here, I'll be the first to complain."
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